June 7, 2016 | Biological Sciences Blog

Day: June 7, 2016

Top 10% Biological Sciences Instructors in Spring 2016

Published June 7, 2016

Fay teaching — Karyn Fay is showing a student a lab technique

Dr. Joshi congratulates the top 10% Biological Sciences instructors in spring 2016:

Heartiest congratulations to the following faculty and graduate students from Biological Sciences Department who have been identified as one of only 85 campus-wide instructors who received an exceptional “Average of 7 dimensions” student evaluation scores during Spring 2016 semester. Their scores were in the top 10% of similarly sized sections university-wide that had at least a 50% response rate.

Provost Jacqueline Huntoon recently congratulated them for their outstanding accomplishments in teaching.

The following faculty received scores above 4.63 out of 5 on average of 7 elements of university-wide class size group with response rate of >50% on student evaluations of their lecture classes:

Dr. Amy Marcarelli, Associate Professor
Ms. Brigitte Morin, Lecturer
Ms. Karyn Fay, Professor of Practice (Winner of teaching award in 2016)
Dr. Thomas Werner, Assistant Professor (Winner of teaching award in 2013)

The following instructors received scores above 4.76 out of 5 on “average of 7 elements” of university-wide class size group with response rate of >50% on student evaluations of their classes:

Jeff Kiiskila, Graduate Student Instructor
Dr. Michelle Seguin, Instructor

Shekhar

Robert Larson awarded AAS-Lundbeck Research Fellowship

Published June 7, 2016

Robert Larson, PhD student in Biological Sciences, has been awarded the 2016 AAS-Lundbeck Research Fellowship as announced on their website. His research is titled ” Targeting Cardiac Sympathetic and Renin Angiotensin Systems with Ang-(1-7) in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy” which will be completed in the Department of Internal Medicine at The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine with Dr. Mark Chapleau.

The Summary of his research:

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a relatively common inherited disease characterized by cardiac hypertrophy (enlarged heart), fibrosis, and dysfunction. Patients with HCM exhibit abnormal neural reflex control of blood pressure and heart rate, and are at high risk of developing heart failure, arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. Current treatment strategies primarily target symptoms and not development of the disease. We propose a novel treatment strategy with Angiotensin-(1-7), a peptide known to diminish sympathetic nerve activity and the pro-fibrotic and pro-hypertrophic actions of angiotensin II. We hypothesize that a combination of sustained inhibition of cardiac sympathetic activity and inhibition of adverse cardiac actions of angiotensin II will act synergistically to prevent or reverse cardiac fibrosis, hypertrophy and arrhythmias in HCM. We will test this hypothesis using an established mouse model of HCM, in which a human mutation is targeted selectively to the heart.

Robert will be completing his degree under Kineseology and Integrative Physiology Adjunct Professor Qing-Hui Chen this summer.

Congratulations from Biological Sciences!